Kirwan, Peter van de Sijde and Aard Groen investigate the early-stage networking activities of high-technology start-ups. How do the entrepre- neurs drive thesefirms to utilize their networks to accumulate the necessary resources from the initial period prior to the firms’ foundation right through to their successful emergence and early growth? To answer this question an entrepreneurship in networks (EiN) model depicts the entre- preneur, acting in a social system, who needs to accumulate four types of
‘capital’ (economic, strategic, cultural and social) to establish and develop the venture. This follows an entrepreneurial process, from opportunity recognition, through opportunity preparation, leading to opportunity exploitation, all the while creating value for thefirm. Using this model, the early-stage networking activities of 22 high-technology start-ups are exam- ined, highlighting the differences pre- and post-foundation. A specific case illustration is given to further demonstrate how these early networking activities enable the entrepreneur to establish and develop thefirm. Finally some European regions are compared with respect to the differences in regional support for thesefirms. The cases emphasize the importance of a key partner to the development of high-technology start-ups and the per- ceived inadequacies in the regions for supporting thesefirms.
The six UK (Warwick and Cardiff) start-ups enjoyed mainly economic capital support in pre- and post-foundation stages of the start-up, in the Netherlands (Twente) and Belgium (Leuven) the capital support became mainly economic, cultural and strategic in this order after the foundation, whereas in Estonia (four start-ups from the University of Tartu) the support remained strategic, both before and after the foundation stage.
Hence, culture seemed to be not that important after all. This chapter con- tributes to the emergence process as an important element in using different capitals as a form of cooperation and support, so the study operates longi- tudinally, but social network theory has not yet been tested sufficiently to a controllable level throughout those cases to prove a relative unimportance of the effect of culture on cooperation modes of techno-ventures, let alone the cooperation between them.
Moreover, it has provided some ingredients for a comprehensive model or theory which is needed to see how a general European innovation and entrepreneurial culture could develop across the borders of nation, region, profession, sector and gender (compare the national, professional and sec- toral cultures: NC, PC and SC). The social network and ‘capitals’ theories are promising elements. This then might ‘automatically’ lead to more coop- eration at the emergence and survival phases of techno-ventures, in which the initiation and implementation stages have to be clearly distinguished:
there is nothing more practical than a good theory! As part of this culture, the technopreneur has to develop skills and values not only at the collective level of a national, professional or sectoral culture, but also at the individ- ual one to foster this cooperation. The theoretical contribution of the book here is to bring culture and psychology together in this particular context of the nascent technopreneur.
An important question for government policy makers at any level – EU, individual member state, province, region (Euroregion) or city – is to know how cooperation between techno-ventures should materialize and whether it happens often enough. EU integration could support cooperation across NC, PC and SC borders, as the SURVIE programme shows. In this sense a framework, such as that presented in Ulijn et al. (ch. 1) might be useful, at least for national culture. Is high cooperation propensity and acceptance of culturally dissimilar partners the ideal for the emergence and survival of techno-starters? It seems likely. Finland and Slovenia, then, are examples for the other member states to follow, at least according to the results of this pilot study. Apart from the above cultural EU member state bench- marking, the following lessons can be drawn from this book:
● Be careful with support; give only the one the techno-starter really asks for. Do not overincubate the baby in the cradle!
● Symbiotic and not competitive entrepreneurship might be the solu- tion for Europe, but clearly embedded in a strong relation between (technological) innovation and entrepreneurship.
● The EU should learn from the US (and the UK) that risk taking should be encouraged.
● European innovative and entrepreneurial culture should not only use its (hidden) Christian values, but also the upcoming Confucian and Islamic ones as part of the above symbiosis and cooperation.
Which Research Methods?
How should future research back up this process of growing cooperation between techno-ventures in Europe? We shall review the following elements
with regard to research methods, a more institutionalized form of cooper- ation, strategic alliances and so on.
To sum up: the review has to be modest because only some case studies and narrative approaches could be presented together with some statistical reviews (mostly in Part II) and one hypothesis testing survey (Ulijn et al.).
With regard to the question: ‘can cooperation between techno-ventures help them to survive?’, a theoretical framework still has to be developed to give an acceptable answer. This book may only illustrate and not prove that cooper- ation makes a difference in the survival of techno-starters and their ventures.
Techno-starters may well prefer to start their own ventures, as discussed pre- viously on pages 22 and 23 of this chapter, however we were unable to find any proof that this would lead to sustainable results in the long-run. As noted earlier, a conceptual model of cooperation between techno-ventures, should account for the following, in a longitudinal perspective:
● Possible factors of the effect on cooperation among high-tech start- ups at a given stage, pre-foundation, emergence, survival, growth and maturity, as is specified in the particular chapters of this book.
● Cooperation, support and skills of techno-starters are needed throughout the life cycle from a longitudinal perspective, where the survival/growth limit has been defined as approximately 6–10 years of age of the start-up.
● The ‘model’ should include the effect of cooperation (or not) on the survival of the start-up at the upper age limit, as an independent vari- able for which to control.
Teamwork and Strategic Alliances
The longitudinal research method proposed by Davidsson (2006) with 17 specific propositions on the basis of some 75 studies might also be a work- able approach with regard to cooperation. A stage beyond the mere inten- tion to cooperate is teamwork, for which Ancona and Caldwell (1998) rethink its composition from the outside in. This is an interesting per- spective since most teams, also in new businesses, start with a family, or a group of friends or colleagues, and so on, whereas the technological knowledge and market economies need an outside perspective for techno- ventures to survive. A benchmark of 20 Italian start-ups with five British, five Dutch and 24 German ones by Ulijn et al. (forthcoming) concludes that cooperating in technology start-ups is not only a local, but also a European entrepreneurship challenge. Different NCs take different perspectives: Germans see the advantage of team versatility; Italians prefer the ‘family’ setting; the English and Dutch prefer individualistic
approaches, although they see the usefulness of the team approach.
Perhaps they are less capable of teaming up naturally right from the start of the venture, given the finding of Chapter 1 that the Dutch sample of 37 start-ups disclosed a low acceptance of partner dissimilarity with a high cooperation level. At the growth and maturity levels, cooperation is often organized into institutionalized forms, such as strategic alliances (SAs), joint ventures, mergers and even acquisitions, particularly relevant for the above technological sectors mentioned hereafter. It is also impor- tant to research the dissolution procedures of such endeavours. How should cooperation be terminated in a businesslike way? We come here to the final step of the classic team development: forming, storming, norming, performing and adjourning. As far as we know, SAs are seldom seen in a historical way from the inception stage of a firm. Cooperation culture can also be studied in this way to predict possible hurdles of collaboration between businesses and individuals.
With Respect to Europe and Its Regions
Europe in general is the link between (technological) innovation and entre- preneurship as it is also embedded in the culture and skills needed of the (future) techno-starter or intrapreneur within a large R&D department of an MNC or government body, for instance. EU policy makers have prob- lems with clearly linking up entrepreneurship and intrapreneurship with new business development. Initiatives are taken such as those described in the Pan-European Gazelles project through one single entrepreneurial and cross-cultural space (Wilson and Twaalfhoven, 2005), but do they lead to more cooperation across professional and sectoral borders? Oversupport and regulation should be avoided. What are the needs of techno-ventures themselves? If one looks at the recent Europe INNOVA initiative (European innovation, December 2005) as a clear stage in the implementa- tion of the Lisbon agreement, the focus is very much on the assessment of innovation performance and exchange of good practice in networks by industrial sectors and clusters. Future studies about cooperation between and by European techno-ventures should also include more detailed pro- fessional and sector culture effect assessment, in particular in some spe- cialized science and technology sectors, such as biotech, aerospace or environment care, to see how they constitute a major step in making Europe the most competitive knowledge market by 2010. Part of it is the cooperation between Euroregions, as described in Graute (ch. 8) and for regions, such as southeast Netherlands with nearby Belgium and Germany (Eindhoven–Leuven–Aachen) as the technological brainport of that EU region and the Baltic Sea region bringing other Nordic, Germanic and
Balto-Slavic countries and cultures together. Those European elements of cooperation should be part of a solid research agenda.
What Culture and Skills Research Is Required for Collaboration for Technopreneurs: Techno-starters or Intrapreneurs?
Following the groundbreaking work by Triandis (see Kim et al., 1994) col- lectivistic attitudes might be tested in techno-starters, as a logical step beyond the pilot study by Ulijn et al. (ch. 1), which itself needs a careful and comprehensive replication. Both Bierbrauer et al. (1994) and Chan (1994) propose psychometrically sound methods of measurement of cul- tural orientation scales of individualistic and collectivistic orientations which can be used in techno-ventures to diagnose a possible lack of cultural cooperation skills at the survival level. As mentioned before, a techno- starter also has a history of cooperation – perhaps in a previous R&D job, his/her firm might be a spin-off. Some 67 per cent of Europeans think that science and technology play an important role in industrial development and around 50 per cent think that Europe is lagging behind the US with respect to scientific discoveries, education of scientists and application of technological advances to industry (S&T Eurobarometer in RTD info, 2005). Hence technology entre- and intrapreneurs are badly needed. An open innovation space of public and private R&D in Europe, perhaps linked up with the new initiative of a virtual European Institute of Technology combining its main campuses, could act as a techno-venture cradle not only for Europe, but also for other parts of the world.
To create much more successful ventures, the intrapreneurship which is needed has to be studied in more detail, along with the relevant skills (see Wai-chung Yeung, 2002 for the skills of transnational entre- and intrapre- neurs; and Menzel, 2007 for skills needed by technology intrapreneurs).
The intrapreneur characteristics in those studies differ from Shell’s HAIRL model: helicopter view, analytical skills, imagination, realistic bottom line, and leadership, in this order of priority (see Ulijn and Fayolle, 2004): vision and ambition come first in China. The list cited earlier (creativity, drive, empathy and persistence at the start-up, courage and risk orientation, ability to reflect, strategic orientation and leadership and communication) together with reliability and decisiveness, and personal values that subsist at the maturity level (reliability, decisiveness, persistence and determina- tion) overlaps with 14 items of intrapreneur characteristics, for which we suggest a decreasing order of priority, still to be tested:
● vision and creativity;
● initiative;
● internal motivation (see Chinese innovative culture);
● autonomy;
● risk taking;
● internal control;
● commitment and persistence;
● market knowledge/customer orientation;
● knowledge of organizational structures and willingness to cross functional borders;
● hands-on attitude and ability to make rapid decisions under uncer- tainty;
● self-confidence and willingness to learn from failure;
● leadership;
● team play and motivation; and
● communication skills.
The above list is seen from the individual’s level. The cultural perspective from the group/corporate perspective overlaps (seven items):
● vision and creativity;
● tolerance for risk;
● tolerance for failure;
● support by top-management, sponsors and mentors;
● recognition of small contributions;
● mutual trust and confidence, superordinate goals; and
● expectation of excellence, high standards of performance.
Amazingly, all these skills have in common that they are poor on items that relate to the other party/person or cooperation. A few exceptions are:
leadership, communication, empathy, customer orientation, team play and motivation, support by top-management, sponsors and mentors and recog- nition of small contributions. So, engineering education and training, both academically and on the job, might have an important task in such skills development. Entrepreneurship is not the same as intrapreneurship.
Schumpeter had already included individuals inside corporations in his concept of entrepreneurship (see Schumpeter’s definition on page 12.
Intrapreneurship indicates a serial or recurring as a source of innovation for corporations: ‘Intrapreneurship denominates episodically recurring processes by which individuals inside organizations pursue opportunities without regard to the alienable resources they currently control’. In a long- itudinal perspective, cooperation also needs to be studied before the techno-ventures emerge, that is in the R&D environment where intrapre- neurship should be available. How does this kind of skill and culture
assessment lead to a change of behaviour, if this is necessary to make for the survival of techno-ventures? With regard to intrapreneurship, Menzel (2007) offers a scenario-based simulation process which might contribute to this, one of the possible options being to become a techno-starter after working for some time in a large R&D facility. The question is whether to stay in the company or leave it, and how? More studies in this vein might suggest how behaviour can become more cooperative. At the other end, the social and economic context of the techno-starter might also make or break his/her success. In the studies reported in this book it was not always easy to make the right distinction between the individual and his/her context (Parts I and II); there is a lot of overlap.
Repeatedly we have said that this book should not be overambitious:
the picture of cooperation between techno-ventures and -starters in Europe is too kaleidoscopic in this respect with regard to distribution over countries, regions, professions, sections and gender. We could not prove anything, but merely illustrate, often using barely comparable case studies, but nevertheless there were some prudent attempts to obtain empirical evidence plus some econometric/sociological/survey-based studies, and the narrative approach proposed in Chapter 3 seems promis- ing. The authors hope to have given at least some insight and awareness into the process of cooperation across the cultural levels of nation, gender, profession, sector and region in the emergence and survival of techno-ventures in Europe.